Book ID: CBB891880881

Engineering America: the life and times of John A. Roebling (2020)

unapi

Richard Haw (Author)


Oxford University Press


Publication Date: 2020
Physical Details: 628
Language: English

John Roebling was one of the nineteenth century's most brilliant engineers, ingenious inventors, successful manufacturers, and fascinating personalities. Raised in a German backwater amid the war-torn chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, he immigrated to the US in 1831, where he became wealthy and acclaimed, eventually receiving a carte-blanche contract to build one of the nineteenth century's most stupendous and daring works of engineering: a gigantic suspension bridge to span the East River between New York and Brooklyn. In between, he thought, wrote, and worked tirelessly. He dug canals and surveyed railroads; he planned communities and founded new industries. Horace Greeley called him "a model immigrant;" generations later, F. Scott Fitzgerald worked on a script for the movie version of his life. Like his finest creations, Roebling was held together by the delicate balance of countervailing forces. On the surface, his life was exemplary and his accomplishments legion. As an immigrant and employer, he was respected throughout the world. As an engineer, his works profoundly altered the physical landscape of America. He was a voracious reader, a fervent abolitionist, and an engaged social commentator. His understanding of the natural world however bordered on the occult and his opinions about medicine are best described as medieval. For a man of science and great self-certainty, he was also remarkably quick to seize on a whole host of fads and foolish trends. Yet Roebling held these strands together. Throughout his life, he believed in the moral application of science and technology, that bridges-along with other great works of connection, the Atlantic Cable, the Transcontinental Railroad-could help bring people together, erase divisions, and heal wounds. Like Walt Whitman, Roebling was deeply committed to the creation of a more perfect union, forged from the raw materials of the continent. John Roebling was a complex, deeply divided yet undoubtedly influential figure, and his biography illuminates not only his works but also the world of nineteenth-century America. Roebling's engineering feats are well known, but the man himself is not; for alongside the drama of large scale construction lies an equally rich drama of intellectual and social development and crisis, one that mirrored and reflected the great forces, trials and failures of the American nineteenth century. (Publisher)

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Reviewed By

Review Donald C. Jackson (October 2021) Review of "Engineering America: the life and times of John A. Roebling". Technology and Culture (pp. 1266-1267). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB891880881/

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Authors & Contributors
Louis W. Potts
Watson, J. Francis
Ryan Dearinger
Rhodes, Joel P.
Ji-Hye Shin
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Historical Society
Concepts
Civil engineering
Railroads
Biographies
Engineers, Civil
Bridges, Railroad
Immigrants
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
United States
California (U.S.)
Great Britain
San Francisco (California)
Cape Girardeau, MO
Western states (U.S.)
Institutions
Pennsylvania Railroad
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company
Bechtel Group
United States Military Academy
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
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